


wherever is your heart (i call home)

by lesbiankavinsky



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/F, Religion, Road Trips, also she's in love with her, and decides to convert, and she starts talking to sana about islam, basically the girls take noora on a roadtrip because she's recovering from everything with william
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-13 17:31:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11764860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/lesbiankavinsky
Summary: “Did you mean it when you said Allah would dig me?”Sana laughs, a bright sound that makes Noora’s chest ache. Then, she seems to realize that Noora was being serious and she says, “Allah loves all of creation. Allah loves you.” She waits for a moment before asking, “What made you think of that?”





	1. Chapter 1

Noora is sitting in the front seat of a red convertible with the top down, the wind tangling her hair. Sana is in the driver’s seat with her sunglasses on and Vilde, Eva, and Chris are stuffed into the backseat, arguing about the snack supply and Noora is feeling freer with every kilometer they put between themselves and Oslo. 

When Noora had gotten back from London, she’d only been half there, her head full of fog. At first, the rest of the girls had thought that it was because she missed William, and she didn’t know how to tell them otherwise. They helped as best they could, all of them -- Vilde helped her eat and Chris helped her laugh and Eva helped her cry and then there was Sana. Sana, who always seemed to be there when Noora needed her, who came up to her when she was standing still in the middle of the hallway, the flood of moving students parting ways around her as she stared, dazed, at nothing and linked their arms together to lead her gently to their next class. But even with Sana, she couldn’t say what it was she was actually feeling until Even, who she saw a lot of these days since she was back at the kollektiv and he stayed over about half the time, gently suggested she make an appointment with a therapist when he found her crying over her burnt scrambled eggs in the kitchen. So it had been first to her therapist and then to her friends, gathered around her on Eva’s bed, that she’d said, “I don’t miss him, I miss who I was before he got in my head.” And things started to get better, but slowly and unsteadily. 

They were sitting together eating froyo when Sana said, “I think you need a vacation.” Noora realized she must have had that glazed expression she’d been slipping into a lot recently, and her froyo was almost all melted and uneaten. And that had been the beginning of Sana’s grand plan: a road trip to Paris with the Girl Squad during summer break. 

And now the five of them are in PChris’ car because apparently he’ll do just about anything for Eva, including letting her take his car for the break.

Eva, hands on the front seat headrests, leans in between Sana and Noora. “How many hours is it to Paris again?”

“Eighteen and a half,” Sana replies. 

“You’re sure we can’t do it in a day?”

Sana takes her eyes briefly off the road to give Eva a look. “No. No way. We’re stopping in Hamburg, that’s still a full day of travel.”

“Okay,” Eva sighs, falling back into the backseat. She starts talking about the best nightclubs in Paris and Noora starts to zone out, looking at the open road in front of them, imagining all her fear unspooling behind them, skittering and dying on the concrete. 

Less than an hour later, they’re standing on the deck of the ferry to Denmark, with the car stowed somewhere below them. Eva had paid the fee for it and, when Noora asked about the expense, shrugged. “It’s PChris’ money. He gives me whatever I want.” Noora had raised her eyebrows at that, but not said anything. 

Eva, Vilde, and Chris have wandered off in search of drinks, leaving Noora and Sana with their elbows on the railing. 

“It’s nice,” Noora says. “Getting out of the city. Like being grown up.”

“We are grown up,” Sana says. “Pretty much.”

Noora shrugs. “I think I still want to be a kid. A kid who sometimes pretends to be an adult. Everything with William -- that was growing up too fast.”

Sana makes a small, sympathetic noise and reaches out to take Noora’s hand, threading their fingers together. Noora looks down, thinking, not for the first time, that she’d really like to kiss Sana’s knuckles. Somehow, it’s something she could do with any of the other girls, but not with Sana. Because Sana has become different somehow. She thinks of something her therapist said -- “Just because you don’t know how to explain a feeling doesn’t make it any less real.” She doesn’t have any words at all for the tangled feeling in her chest when Sana touches her, but it’s real, real, real. 

Then the other girls show up with cans of juice and beer and little bags of snacks and Sana pulls her hand from Noora’s. Noora accepts a packet of pretzels and tries not to miss the warmth of Sana’s skin against hers. 

When they reach Denmark they stop for sandwiches and eat in the car and Noora puts her feet up on the dashboard. Sana reaches across the gearshift, glancing between Noora and the road, to brush a bit of mustard from the corner of Noora’s mouth and her lips feel so strange, like there’s something missing from them, like she needs to be kissed right now or -- and okay, she knows a couple of words for this, but she looks away, her elbow on the windowsill, hand outside the car to feel the wind harsh against her skin. 

“Sana,” Noora says, not looking at her.

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean it when you said Allah would dig me?”   


Sana laughs, a bright sound that makes Noora’s chest ache. Then, she seems to realize that Noora was being serious and she says, “Allah loves all of creation. Allah loves you.” She waits for a moment before asking, “What made you think of that?”

Noora squirms a bit, wanting but also not wanting to talk about it. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve been thinking lately. You know, for a while I’ve been jealous of your hijab.”

“Jealous?” Sana says, her tone unreadable.

“I’m sorry,” Noora says, scrubbing at her eye. “That’s the wrong word. I mean, I know you get a lot of shit from people for it, I don’t mean like -- I mean, I just think it’s powerful. That you decide how much other people see of you. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Sana says, her voice soft again.

“Like, I love my red lipstick because it’s  _ me _ , you know, it’s like my trademark, but when people tell me they think it’s hot I just -- want to scrub it off, you know? I hate people looking at me and thinking I’m hot, I hate men looking at me, I hate -- I just hate it. I don’t want them to have access to me. I never gave them permission.” Noora hadn’t meant to say quite that much and she’s silently grateful that the girls in the backseat have a lively conversation going and don’t seem to have noticed anything she’d said.

Sana takes a moment before saying, “I wear the hijab because it connects me to my faith, but you’re right, there’s power in it as well. People think it means I’m oppressed, but really it means I have more control.”

“Yeah,” Noora says. “Exactly. And sometimes I wish I had that. A lot of the time.”

Sana shrugs. “You could.”

“No,” Noora says, shaking her head. “I’d feel totally wrong about it, I’m not Muslim.”

“You could be Muslim.” 

Sana’s eyes don’t leave the road but Noora feels like someone is looking at her properly for the first time in ages, for the first time since before William. She wonders: how do you thank someone for seeing you. She clears her throat, a small and habitual sound that usually precedes something she isn’t entirely ready to say out loud. “I uh. I’ve actually been thinking about that? That’s why I asked. About Allah.”

A small pause and then, “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously.”

“Okay,” Sana says, and the word is full of air. “You’ll want to start with research. I can send you some things to read. You should start reading the Quran. See if it speaks to you. And we can go from there.”

Noora smiles at Sana, but Sana still has her eyes on the road, so Noora hopes Sana is getting the message anyway.  _ Thank you. _ Because now this is a  _ we  _ thing and not just a  _ me  _ thing which makes it less overwhelming. She’s spent that past -- how many months now? -- looking for something bigger than her, something that can make some sense out of life, or make it okay that it doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t remember when it was that the sense she’d made out of her life fell apart, but it’s shattered now and she hadn’t known where to look until she’d started getting the urge to follow Sana wherever she goes when the alarm on her phone goes off, since she’d started getting the sense that it was calling for her, too. 

They don’t talk about it anymore that afternoon but there’s a lightness in Noora’s chest like nothing she’s felt in a long time, and she can’t stop it pouring out of her. She sings along to the shitty pop music on the radio at the top of her lungs until Sana laughs and laughs and swats at her to make her stop because, “Noora, I’m trying to  _ drive _ ,” and Noora can’t stop grinning because she made Sana laugh. It’s nice that Sana’s driving because it means she has to keep her eyes on the road and Noora can get away with staring, watching the sun on Sana’s dark skin, the movement of her hands on the steering wheel, tapping out the beat of the music on the radio, the shape of her lips with their plum-colored lipstick when she smiles at something Chris says. And then she feels bad because she’s  _ just  _ had a conversation with Sana about the way neither of them feel comfortable with people looking at them, and what is this thing with Sana lately, anyway? Of course there’s the voice in the back of her head, constant and grating -- Vilde’s voice saying,  _ are you a lesbian? Are you a lesbian? Are you a lesbian?  _ And yeah, that question is getting realer and scarier by the day, but there’s another voice telling her she only feels this way about Sana because it’s Sana who always ends up saving her when she’s spaced out somewhere in school or outside the coffeeshop where the Girl Squad get tea together or in the middle of a party. She doesn’t want to be a person who needs to be saved, or a person who moons over anyone who helps them. She doesn’t talk to people about her problems because she wants to be someone who can deal things all on her own. And yeah, her therapist says that’s probably not the best strategy, that she deserves help and everyone needs to lean on their friends from time to time but it still feels like breathing underwater, lungs full of liquid instead of oxygen. She’s getting better, though. She really is. All the same, she hasn’t found a way to feel okay about wanting to be near Sana all the time. 

At dinnertime they stop at a restaurant and Eva and Vilde, their legs stiff from the cramped back seat, race each other around the parking lot a couple times before going inside. They take a booth in the back and order too much food, stealing off each other’s plates and laughing at Eva’s impressions of PChris, and all the while Noora keeps watch Sana smile, her gold hoop earrings catching the light and yeah, Noora knows she’s a mess right now, and yeah, maybe she wants to be near Sana because she knows Sana is a safe harbor, but really there’s no shame in looking for a place of refuge when the waves are this high. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the others have gone to bed and she’s lined the bathtub with extra pillows from the closet, she sits in her little nest with her laptop and starts her research. She has four windows open on her screen -- a PDF of a translation of Quran, an FAQ about conversion, a youtube video of an imam giving a lecture, and a description of the five daily prayers -- when the bathroom door opens. Noora startles and slams her laptop shut.
> 
> “Hey, it’s okay, it’s just me,” Sana says, standing in the doorway.

After dinner Noora takes the wheel and Sana moves to the passenger’s seat. There’s some sunny pop song on the radio and the girls in the back are singing along and laughing and Noora nods her head along. How awfully she’d missed them while she was away in London. Somehow they become so light when they’re all together, so able to laugh no matter what else is happening in their lives. 

“You’re doing better,” Sana says.

“Hmm.”

“You’re doing better than when we left.”

Noora shrugs. She guesses it’s true, but her emotional state these days is a strange thing, unstable and hard to read. She’ll think she’s fine one minute and be crying the next and then snap abruptly into numbness. “I’m good right now,” she says.

“We’ll take that,” Sana replies. “Right now is where we’re living.”

“And you?”

“I’m okay,” Sana says. Noora thinks she hears something a little off in Sana’s voice, so she doesn’t reply, leaves a silence for Sana to fill if she wants to. Noora hopes she will fill it, both because she’s highly aware of the imbalance these days between how much Sana looks after her and how much she looks after Sana, and because she loves the sound of her friend’s voice. Sure enough, after a moment, Sana goes on. “Things are a little strange at home. I’m worried about Elias and I still haven’t made up with Jamilla and -- I don’t know, I’m ready for things to go back to normal.”

“Jamilla? The one we thought graffiti’d your locker?”

“Yeah,” Sana says, and Noora glances at her to see her shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “We, uh. We used to be really close. She was there for me -- one of the only people really there for me -- when things were really bad for me in middle school. Before I knew you guys. And things between us just sort of fell apart and I don’t know how to fix it now, things have gotten so bad.”

“I didn’t know,” Noor says softly. How much does she not know about Sana’s life outside school?

“Yeah,” Sana says. “I don’t really talk about that stuff.”

Noora hesitates for a moment, then asks, “Do you want to?” 

Sana shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s strange. You live at the kollektiv, Eva’s mom is never around, who knows what’s going on with Vilde’s mom. Chris’ family seems pretty chill but sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who actually  _ lives  _ with my family. Like home is where my life is. Not that you guys aren’t important to me but -- I would never make a big choice without talking to my parents. Everything important that happens to me, I tell my brother. And sometimes I feel like, for you guys, this is your family. This group. And it’s my family, too, but not my only one. So here I am with two families, and I feel like if I brought them together and it didn’t go well -- I don’t know. That would just hurt too much. And I’m not sure it would go well, because you’re so different from them, and your world is so different from theirs. So I don’t tell you that much about them and I don’t tell them that much about you.”

There’s a long silence. Noora realizes she’s never heard Sana talk that long about herself, and the fact that she hadn’t noticed that before makes a little blossom of shame open up in her chest. She bites her lip. “I wish it wasn’t complicated,” she says after a while. “You deserve -- you know, you deserve to not feel like your life is split like that. Like you have to hide one part of your life no matter where you are.”

She looks over and is surprised to see Sana smiling. 

“What?” Noora asks.    


“I’m not hiding any part of my life when I pray. I’d never thought of it like that before, but it’s true.”

Noora smiles back at her. “I’m glad.” She runs the tip of her tongue along her teeth. “Still, I want you to be able to talk to your friends if things are bad at home. I want us to be safe for you, you know?”

“Me too,” Sana says.

In the silence that follows, Noora thinks they probably both know that neither one of them has any idea how to make that happen. They talk very little for the rest of the drive.

They arrive at the youth hostel in Hamburg after dark and check into a room with two bunkbeds. The others are just beginning to argue about who should share one of the thin twin mattresses when Noora says, “I can sleep in the bathtub.”

“You sure?” Eva asks, concerned.

“Yeah, I’m used to a mat in the closet at the kollektiv, I’ll be fine.”

She does, however, have an ulterior motive. When the others have gone to bed and she’s lined the bathtub with extra pillows from the closet, she sits in her little nest with her laptop and starts her research. She has four windows open on her screen -- a PDF of a translation of Quran, an FAQ about conversion, a youtube video of an imam giving a lecture, and a description of the five daily prayers -- when the bathroom door opens. Noora startles and slams her laptop shut.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s just me,” Sana says, standing in the doorway. 

Noora smiles, but her heart is still racing. 

“What are you doing up? It’s almost four.”

“I, uh, was researching. Like you said I should.” 

Sana comes over to the bathtub and climbs in so she’s sitting facing Noora. “I didn’t mean all night,” she says.

“I guess I lost track of time,” Noora says, twisting her fingers together on top of her laptop.

“What are you finding?”

“A lot,” Noora replies. “Stuff you already know, I’m sure. Mostly I’m finding that I, uh.” She stops, tucks her hair behind her ear, looks down. “I really like it. That’s so, so the wrong word,” she says, laughing. “Like, I read things, and then I start crying, because they feel right, you know? And it’s things I already know, but they feel different. Like the world is shifting under my feet. It feels like -- like when you told me I didn’t deserve what happened to me with William, and I started crying. Because I mean, I knew that, on some level, but hearing it from you, from someone I trust and love --”  _ love,  _ the word burned in her mouth -- “felt different from saying it to myself. So like -- hang on.” She opens her laptop. “Like this --  _ so verily with the hardship there is relief.  _ I know that. I’m living that right now. But I read that in the Quran, and I start crying. Am I making any sense?” She looks up at Sana to see her smiling and nodding.

“I know exactly what you mean. The words are holy, so they carry more weight.”

Noora nods. “I wish I could read it in Arabic.”

“I could recite some of it for you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course.” Sana closes her eyes and takes a breath, and begins to recite. Noora has heard recordings of people reciting portions of the Quran before, knows how musical it sounds, the way the words, incomprehensible to her, still somehow carry meaning, but she isn’t prepared for this. Sana, her face lovely and bright and focused, sitting inches away from her in the bathtub at four in the morning, with the word of God flowing from her mouth. 

When Sana stops and opens her eyes, her expression changes. “Oh, Noora, you’re crying.”

Noora rushes to wipe at her eyes. “You don’t -- you don’t have to stop,” she says, not sure how else to express how much she doesn’t want this moment to end.

“That’s all I know of that section,” Sana says apologetically. 

Noora takes a deep, shaky breath. And then, before she even knows what to say, the words come tumbling out of her. “I have a problem. I, uh.” She covers her face with one hand. “I think I have to tell you because -- it’s important now, like, it’s all tied up with  _ this  _ and this is serious and I can’t have any secrets.”

Sana frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Noora finally manages to look at Sana and says, “I think -- I think I have a crush on you, and it’s making everything really, really confusing. Like when you were reciting, did I feel the way I felt because I’m being called to Islam or because I love the sound of your voice and that’s the most beautiful I’ve ever heard your voice sound.”

“Oh,” Sana says, very quiet.

Noora feels like her heart is coming apart. She wishes she could take her words back because Sana’s face is so troubled, almost  _ hurt,  _ Noora thinks, and she’d do anything to make her look again the way she did when she was reciting. “I’m sorry,” she says, trying to keep the franticness out of her voice. “I shouldn’t have said anything, it’s just I feel like I have to be honest about --”

“No,” Sana says. “No, don’t be sorry. It just -- it makes things complicated, you know, because I’ve had a crush on you since -- oh, since I don’t know when, and I didn’t really think I’d ever have to deal with it. Because what were the chances that you’d ever like me back.”

For a moment, all Noora can do is stare. “What do you mean, what are the chances,” she says finally, with a little laugh. “Sana, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. You’re smart and you’re funny and you’re braver than anyone I know. How could I help it?” 

Sana is smiling small and hopeful and that makes Noora grin wide. 

“So,” Noora says, “what do we do?”

Sana presses her lips together. “I think,” she says, “that might be complicated. And it might make things more complicated for you with Islam. I don’t want you to convert for me, you know? I think maybe, for right now, we should sleep on it.”

Noora nods, because she can see that it’s the smart thing to do, even if she can hardly think of sleep right now. Sana seems to be about to get up but then she leans forward and kisses Noora, very gently, just at the corner of her eye. Then she presses her thumb to the spot and smiles at Noora. “Think of it as a blessing,” she says. “May you see clearly.” 

Then she gets up and moves in her quiet, careful way to the bathroom door and back out into the room, shutting the light off behind her. 

Noora sets her laptop down on the toilet seat and slides down into her pile of pillows and blankets, staring at the ceiling as her eyes adjust to the dark. She puts a hand to her chest to feel the pounding of her heart. Strange to say but she isn’t sure she knew, really knew, that she had a crush on Sana before she said it out loud. She’s been denying it now for a while, burying deep all the ways in which what she feels for Sana is different from what she feels for the rest of the girls but she couldn’t have put the word  _ crush  _ on it until the word was coming out of her mouth. Like the truth had gotten tugged out of her by something bigger than herself. Ever since William she’s felt sick just thinking of getting into another relationship, but she hadn’t let herself consider the possibility of being with a girl and only now is she beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, it’s guys that make her feel sick and not the concept of dating generally. She puts the tip of her pinky to the corner of her eye where Sana had kissed her.  _ May you see clearly.  _ She thinks she could cry. Nothing is clear right now and her brain feels like it’s buzzing slightly from exhaustion and excitement but all the same she feels like there’s a candle behind her sternum, just between her ribs, filling up her throat with light and smoke. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Angie for proofing!
> 
> Note: I'm not Muslim, though I have considered converting several times, so some of Noora's thoughts/experiences are pulled from my own experience. My proofreader is Muslim so hopefully she'll catch me if I say anything insensitive but still: if anything in this fic ever seem to cross any line, please let me know.


End file.
